My Racist Friend

September 4th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

Recently I was shocked, appalled, and otherwise taken aback by comments from a friend. I’ve known this guy, whom I’ll call Richie, since Tenth grade, which is roughly twenty years. We were visiting the Ocean City (New Jersey) boardwalk and letting our collective kids (bunch of communist children) ride the rides in the swamp of germs and bullies. It wasn’t the actual visit or the rides or the communication during most of our visit that alarmed me, but a simple walk to the car to feed the meters for another fun hour.

While walking back with “Richie” and, uh, “Ken”, “Richie” started talking about politics. “Richie” is quite the typical redneck, softball playing, beer-swilling citizen of the town I grew up in, deep in the southern part of New Jersey (the other ass as I like to call it). He’s a proud Republican. Why? All the trite reasons – he thinks Democrats will raise his taxes, take away his guns, and let races other than white rule over his home. He used to be a gun owner until it was taken away by the police due to an illegal discharge. This was when he was a Police Officer, as well. He is also a Paramedic, who believes that “AIDS babies and Retards” should be killed, because they serve no purpose.

Why am I friends with him? The laughs, I suppose. He has had so many GREAT ideas about the world that it keeps me in a constant state of amusement. . . and shock. He thinks (and it’s a wider belief than you may think) that the solution to the Middle East problem is to turn the entire area into a swath of radioactive glass. His solution to winning the Iraq War would be to herd all of the Iraqis into one area and nuke ‘em. I guess like what they tried in Fallujah, but I digress.

I suppose I am friends with him only because I have been friends with him for years, and it’s just convenient. He is helpful and he is nice to those he likes and he does do things that are “Christian-like”, as well, making for quite a strange concoction of philosophies.

During the walk back to the cars he shook me to my core. He said some things I never thought I’d hear from him and some things I hope to never hear from him again. He first began railing at McCain about picking Palin as his running mate. He ranted for five minutes about why it was stupid to pick someone with LESS experience than Obama. Then he said it didn’t matter who won the election but he wouldn’t vote for McCain. It wouldn’t matter because it will take more than four to eight years to clean up the Bush mess, and this guy was a hardcore two-time Bush supporter. Those two statements took me aback. I couldn’t believe he said it, and I told him through laughter.

Then he again said something so boneheaded, so vile, so despicable that I was again thrown into shock. He jocularly told me about the shirt I should have remembered (I have NO recollection of ever hearing of such a shirt) about Martin Luther King Jr., his face with “I had a dream” on the front, and the back with his head in crosshairs over “but we had ours first” emblazoned in block letters. He thought that shirt was a hoot.

I told him I don’t ever remember seeing that shirt and thought it would be disgusting. He said he wanted to make one with Obama, which I thought was even more disgusting and I had no idea what to say except that he was vile, repugnant, disgusting, and repulsive. He kept talking, but my other friend “Ken” and I kept pretty silent walking back to the kids.

Was it just talk? He’s obviously a racist and pretty deplorable, but he’s also pretty close to the family and has helped me out a lot during treatments. What does someone with a conscience do? Keep the racist friend and try to guide him to some sort of enlightenment, or let him stew in his own backward views of society while commingling with like-minded souls? I’d prefer to try to steer him on a straighter path instead of having his hatred multiply with others of the same mind-set. However, it’s a tough balancing act.

What does this have to do with anything?  Just a suspicion that my friend “Richie” makes up a fair amount of the population of this country, pointing to a deep-rooted race problem. While he would never act violently against a black man or woman, I believe he certainly has it in him to discriminate against races other than white. So where is the line drawn between boldfaced racism and slight, yet ugly, discrimination based on race?

spread the panic!
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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Panic!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


Discussion (2)¬

  1. Matthew says:
    September 4, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    I am in shock… Not because of what you wrote, but because I could have written it myself. I am in this position with several of my friends I have known since middle and high school and family members who have all been otherwise very good to me. The only thing I have ever been able to do is practice a policy of engagement and to call them out where it is possible without making a scene or being confrontational. I usually phrase my call out in the form of a question. You know, I sort of scratch my head like I just don’t get it (think Columbo). I only have one black friend to whom I am close enough I can discuss this. He says I have way more overt exposure to the reality of the deep-rooted undercurrent of white racism than he will ever get because in front of him, it’s “all good”. I feel very lucky to have such a good friend to talk to. It’s good for both of us. I hope you get a lot of good feedback on this. Good luck!

  2. Waldorf Van Buren says:
    September 5, 2008 at 12:01 am

    Matthew: Thanks for the comment. I could write a weekly blog on the little snapshots of Racism I see from my former hometown. I’m not even miltantly liberal (how’s that for an oxymoron?) about race, but it does enrage me when I see examples of intolerance and stupidity about race AND class, and I suppose I could write a blog about that as well. However, I’m pretty shallow as well as lazy.